Linguistic Methods
In the BNC, disyllabic adjectives ending in -y take the synthetic comparative form more
often than those ending in -r and -re.
1. The comparative degree of adjectives can be expressed using two alternative variants.
The synthetic form, where the suffix -er is added to the adjective and the analytic one,
where more precedes it. The comparative formation of disyllabic adjectives often varies.
Reference grammars tell us that there is no hard boundary that establishes which
adjectives take one form instead of the other. Though, the word-final segments and the
location of stress seem to play a role. For example, disyllabic adjectives stressed on the
first syllable and ending in -y, -ly, -le and ow usually prefer the synthetic form (e.g.,
crazier, simpler). Instead, those ending in -ful, -ish, -al, -ic and -ous would rather take
the analytic comparative (e.g. more careful, more anxious). However, there are some
exceptions to these generalizations. In spite of sharing the same position of stress as well
as phonological ending, some adjectives prefer different comparative formation (e.g.,
handsome, handsomer; awesome, more awesome).
2. Hypothesis: In the BNC, disyllabic adjectives ending in -y take the synthetic comparative
form more often than those ending in -r and -re.
3. We will examine how the endings -y, -r and -re of disyllabic adjectives affect the use of
comparative forms, whose distribution and variation are to be investigated. Conforming
to this, the independent variables of the hypothesis are disyllabic adjectives ending in -y
and disyllabic adjectives ending in -r and -re. The dependent variables are the synthetic
comparative form and the analytic one.
4. Our variables can be categorized into two mutually exclusive groups. Also, they are not
linked by any rank order. Therefore, we are dealing with categorical (nominal) variables.
5. In this research, the British National Corpus (BNC) was used to collect data. The use of
Part of Speech (POS) tagging system allowed a more sped-up analysis than a simple
manual search. More specifically, the tag employed was “_jjr”. The latter is added after
the queried adjective, enabling the search of its comparative form.
Before proceeding with the findings, it was necessary to rule out wrong examples that
might have distorted the search results. A contextual reading provided an insight into
what needed to be weeded out. The excluded examples can be categorised into three
main types:
In most cases, a noun occurs immediately after the adjective under analysis. A closer
reading asserts the quantifier more to refer to the noun itself rather than the
adjective, to designate a greater amount of the given object. As we can see in the
example (37):
(37) There were even more empty seats as the game ticked into the last minute […]
